Sources of support and perceptions of safety among children in England and Wales: year ending March 2024

In the year ending March 2024, the 10- to 15-year-olds Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated:

• 3.5% of 10- to 15-year-olds do not currently have an adult they can trust in their life; this was more likely for boys (4.8%) than girls (2.2%)

• 3.6% of 10- to 15-year-olds missed or skipped school without permission for a day or longer and 3.9% were suspended or excluded from school in the last 12 months

• 48.3% of 10- to 15-year-olds had seen or heard about a violent incident involving people they knew of a similar age in the last 12 months and just over a quarter (26.2%) had seen online content showing violence between groups of young people or drug dealing in the same time period

• 14.6% of 10- to 15-year-olds felt that in their daily life they were likely or very likely to see people they believed were involved in gangs, with boys (17.5%) more likely than girls (11.6%)

• 7.5% of 10- to 15-year-olds felt it was likely or very likely that getting attacked by someone without a weapon would happen to them in their daily life

• 3.1% of 10- to 15-year-olds felt it was likely or very likely that getting attacked by someone with a weapon would happen to them in their daily life

• 9.0% of 10- to 15-year-olds avoided travelling alone in the last 12 months because they were concerned about people carrying weapons and 5.8% because they were concerned about gangs

• 0.5% of 10- to 15-year-olds carried a knife in the last 12 months

Crime Survey for England and Wales

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is a face-to-face victimisation survey, which asks people resident in households in England and Wales about their experiences of a selected range of offences in the 12 months before the interview. From January 2009, in households with children aged 10 to 15 years, a child is also selected at random to be interviewed using a separate shorter Crime Survey for England and Wales: 10- to 15-year-olds' questionnaire.

Questions on the sources of support and perceptions of safety, covering perceptions and experiences of violence including weapons and “gangs”, and who they trust were asked to children aged 10 to 15 years in a self-completion module as part of the 10- to 15-year-olds CSEW for the year ending March 2024. The same self-completion module was also asked to 16- to 29-year-olds who took part in the CSEW in the same time period. Children were also asked questions about school truancy and exclusion as part of the 10- to 15-year-old module, but these questions were not asked to 16- to 29-year-olds.

The CSEW gathers information from a sample, rather than from the whole population. The sample is designed to be as accurate as possible, given practical limitations like time and cost constraints. Therefore, the estimates contain some uncertainty and are not precise figures. View more information on how we measure and communicate uncertainty for our surveys.

Quality

The accredited official statistics designation for estimates from the 10- to 15-year-olds CSEW was suspended after the year ending March 2020.

Questions on the sources of support and perceptions of safety were added to the 10- to 15-year-olds CSEW and the CSEW for the first time in the year ending March 2024. The questions are still in the testing phase and are not yet fully developed. As such, data presented in this publication are official statistics in development. Caution should be taken when interpreting the estimates.

For more information, see our Crime in England and Wales QMI and our User guide to crime statistics for England and Wales: March 2024.

Definitions

Gang

Within the sources of support and personal safety module, the term gang refers to a group:

• which has a shared group identity such as a name

• who get involved in violent, threatening or criminal acts together

• which may involve young people being asked or told to do things by others such as carry drugs or weapons

Weapon carrying

Estimates on weapon carrying are produced by combining the responses to the questions “In the last 12 months have you, carried a weapon for any of the following reasons?” and “What weapon did you carry?”. We are unable to publish data showing a breakdown of why a weapon was carried because of issues with the routing of these questions. Questions about the reasons for weapon carrying are being further developed to ensure quality, and we hope to introduce these in the future.